Chapter 1: What is the connection between Les Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein?
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Go to hellofresh.com slash scandal10fm to get 10 free meals plus a freeze willing knife, $144.99 value on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers only. Varies by plan. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Infamous. Producer Lily Houston-Smith here. We have a brand new episode this week.
It's about America's Next Top Model and about tire banks. If you want to listen to that episode, it's in your feed now. It's called Behind the Scenes of America's Next Top Model, and it goes deep into the Netflix docuseries that you may have watched or heard about and also talks about some things that that documentary might have left out. So go check that out if you haven't already.
It's in your feed now. But we also wanted to drop this here in your feed as a little something extra this week. If you're interested in the darker side of modeling and the fashion world, you might also like another podcast series Vanessa hosted called Fallen Angel. It's about the rise of Victoria's Secret and the complicated story of the billionaire behind it, Les Wexner.
It also goes into his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and how that connection became one of the biggest mysteries surrounding Epstein's money and power. This story feels especially relevant right now.
As you probably know, millions of pages of so-called Epstein files have recently been released as part of transparency efforts around the investigation into Epstein and his network of powerful associates. And in the wake of that release, Les Wexner was deposed by members of Congress for hours about his relationship with Epstein. Which means, once again, their connection is back in the headlines.
So if the America's Next Top Model episode gets you thinking about the modeling industry and the powerful people behind it, definitely stay tuned and listen to the episode we're about to play you. Again, the series is called Fallen Angel, and you can listen to the whole thing right now. We'll leave a link in the show notes. For now, here's episode two of Fallen Angel.
I opened a store and it was successful. And I was thinking about what other businesses I could start. I said, well, I don't know anything about the shoe business. You know, half the people in the world are men. So maybe we could start a men's business. I'm a man. And I think men don't buy as much as women. And I remember saying that all the women I know wear underwear most of the time.
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Chapter 2: How did Les Wexner revolutionize the lingerie industry?
But to understand Victoria's Secret's first baby steps, the rise of the brand, you need to understand the man who was at the head of it for so long, Les Wexner. Now, you just heard him giving a speech to the American Academy of Achievement, where President Clinton and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have had talks, and Wexner too, even though he's just a guy from the rag trade.
But Wexner didn't speak with us. We sent him a list of questions through Victoria's Secret, but they declined to participate. They used to call Les the Merlin of the mall. He was famous for his fluency in the behavioral patterns that turned into capital D dollar signs for brands. The guy is also a huge philanthropist. He has given away chunks of his wealth to causes he believes in.
And he happens to be the richest man in Ohio, where he has lived and worked forever. Les is sort of an unassuming, elfin-looking guy with big, friendly salt-and-pepper eyebrows.
By nature, I'm an optimist. I'm very open-minded and flexible. So people say the older you get, you get set in your ways. I don't think so. You have to keep being curious.
He seems like your friendliest, most even-keeled uncle who just calls once a month to check in. And yet he's headed up a global lingerie company that changed sex and sexuality in America. And not only that, he got entangled with the most famous teen predator in America, Jeffrey Epstein. Before all this happened, though, he was just a kid in Columbus, Ohio.
I felt terribly constrained just by the family circumstance. I was driven to escape from my childhood and to be something, maybe create my own world or career the way I wanted it to be. It came from very modest circumstance. My father was born in Russia.
Leslie Les Wexner was born in 1937 and raised by two Russian Jewish merchants who ran a small clothing store, Leslie's, named after their son. As the story goes, his parents wanted to go on their first vacation in a while and Les agreed to mind the store. But then there was a snowstorm and not too many customers.
So Les took the opportunity to examine the business's trends and behavioral patterns. He realized that big-ticket items like coats and fancy dresses were selling with less frequency than unsung heroes like shirts and skirts. Bella and Harry Wexner were not exactly interested in their son's feedback, so Les was done working at Leslie's.
But then he got $5,000 from his Aunt Ida and opened a new store named The Limited in 1963. Growing up in the 80s, I remember going to The Limited. It was the kind of place an adolescent could go with her mom, and it was always right on trend. It was like Zara is today. Insanely successful.
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Chapter 3: What was Roy Raymond's vision for Victoria's Secret?
Les said to us, you know, we're setting records. And I remember HR had brought out balloons, you know, and we're blowing horns and one of those quarterly briefings. And we were all so happy. And then Les got up there and spoke. He goes, you know what? He goes, I don't really believe in stopping to smell the roses.
And there was this kind of a hush over the room, and he goes, I'm afraid I'm going to get hit by a truck. And we all looked at each other and thought, wow, okay. But that gives you an idea of the mindset. I remember looking at the person next to me and saying, I thought maybe we were going to break out some champagne or something here. Guess not.
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And you can all go listen to it ad-free by subscribing to the Binge Podcast channel. What podcast, Corinne? Tell us. Oh, it's called Blink Jake Handel's Story. I created it about a man named Jake, who I met, who is the only survivor of a terminal brain illness brought on by heroin use. But there is a lot of mystery involved.
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While Les Wexner was busy establishing himself as a business magnate in Ohio, another entrepreneur was carving his own niche in the market, all the way in Palo Alto, California. When he started Victoria's Secret, people were still looking at women as women and men as men, and they didn't blend. You were probably under the impression that Les Wexner dreamed up Victoria's Secret. But he didn't.
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Chapter 4: How did Les Wexner acquire Victoria's Secret?
And he always felt that the business suits were great for climbing the ladder, but it took away from their femininity.
And so his vision was under the stiff suit. It was important that women still felt feminine.
Roy Raymond realized that women yearned to feel both powerful and feminine at the same time, and his stores evoked a bygone era. The small, intimate spaces were furnished with Victorian decor, ornate rugs, and Tiffany lamps. He sold silky, demure teddies and provocative lace bras in sumptuous reds and powdery pinks.
Early catalogs featured models who were thin and white with romantic tendrils framing their faces. And this is what I learned from him in business. It's not that you go in and you copy someone else. You go in and you create from nothing. You bring something in that doesn't exist. You find what's needed and wanted. Now that to me is a brilliant business move for him. So he created business.
a market and a need that women went, oh my gosh, look what I get to try on. Because they didn't have that before. The catchy name, Victoria's Secret, Roy came up with that too. He was on a trip in Europe with his wife on a train. And Victoria was a fictitious name. They just thought it up on the train. And then they went into, okay, let's make it something secretive. She has a secret.
She's going to hide. She's hiding something.
And she doesn't want you to know. But guess what? She does want you to know.
All the while, Les Wexner, who was busy growing his company, The Limited Brands, and then later L Brands, couldn't get the idea of a place that sold lingerie, not just underwear, but lingerie, out of his mind. He had spent two or three years, he said, looking all over the world for the shop of his dreams.
As I was traveling around in Europe, Asia, in my mind, there must be this wonderful lingerie shop.
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Chapter 5: What role did marketing play in Victoria's Secret's success?
I didn't know what the margin was. I didn't know anything about it. I didn't know about fits, constructions, all this stuff. I said, I'd figure it out. And so I bought the business. And we were a public company. I called our board and I said, well, I bought this business. And the response was, well, everybody can have a toy. If this is something you want to play with, it's okay.
But it could never be a business.
More about Victoria and her secrets after the break. Sabrina. Corinne.
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You know, she's horny and she's in charge.
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Chapter 6: How did the brand evolve under Les Wexner's leadership?
Rory Raymond started Victoria's Secret because he felt like a pervert in lingerie stores, buying teddies for his wife, right? He thought of it as a place where men could shop for their fantasies. But Lust may have also known that in order to make serious money, he had to seduce the female customer herself.
He stripped away the mahogany and the blushing boyhood gaze, and he hired an expert to tap into the female psyche. Hello. Thank you for having us for your beautiful home.
My pleasure. I always liked old houses, and I always wanted to live in one.
Cindy Fadis-Fields is equal parts floaty and grounded. She's got her hair cut in a blonde Lady Bob, and she lives in a brownstone with the walls painted flush of summer pink. Sort of like Victoria's Secret stores.
Well, I joined the company in 1984. Les Wexner was the best retailer in the land. And the opportunity to work for him in a business that I found fascinating really rang my chimes. My girlfriend said, why don't you ask Les for a job? I dare you to send him a telegram. I mean, that's how long ago this was. Telegrams!
Once Cindy was hired by Victoria's Secret, she wanted to focus on mail-order clothes. That was a sector that had huge growth in the 80s. It was like the internet, but in your hand, on paper. Exactly. And the Victoria's Secret catalog? Millions of people got it. But the way that Les' executives had conceived of it was sort of dusty and old.
The catalogs might have a picture of a man nuzzling a woman on the cover, sort of like a paperback romance novel.
She's dressed in a bustier and a bikini and their polka dot, and he's nuzzling her. So I don't know what's going to happen next, but I'm glad the camera was turned off.
Eventually, Cindy became the CEO of the catalog business, and she wanted to change the look.
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Chapter 7: What were the implications of Wexner's relationship with Epstein?
I am sure that our fantasy Victoria and her husband had a good, healthy sex life. But they would never be blatant about it.
But the real reason that the muse Victoria was so important? She kept everyone at the company working towards one common goal. That's what Cindy says.
There were hundreds and hundreds of people touching the catalog every day. Package designers at the store, store layout, internal designers, the photographers of the catalog. And how do you keep all of these people focused? Les used to use this example. How do you keep Mickey Mouse's ears black? You may think Mickey Mouse should have green ears.
So you go off and make Mickey's ears green, but I'm working on a catalog and I think his ears should be pink. And now all of a sudden, nobody can recognize Mickey. So you would ask yourself the question, would Victoria do this? And so you would say to Victoria, can I change Mickey's ears from black to pink? And Vicki would say, no. So I know it sounds goofy, but it was a powerful, powerful tool.
Les was sort of this nerdy guy who was trying very hard to create the perfect life for himself. He builds this magnificent house of his with the horse barn and the party barn and the pool to bathe the horses and everything. He worked to make everything perfect.
Within two years, Victoria's Secret was taking in $500 million. Like Victoria's Angels would later, Les' new company sprouted its wings.
Fredericks of Hollywood filed for Chapter 11 earlier this month. Even as its arch rival, the lingerie Leviathan Victoria's Secret reported two... By the early 90s, Victoria's Secret had already become the largest lingerie retailer in the U.S.
There was a guy, he was the... the Columbus truck driver. He was just driving around all day, bringing returns back. He retired with several million dollars worth of limited stock in the mid 80s. And I was just that happiest guy on earth.
With Victoria firmly in charge, Les Wexner was becoming richer and richer. And his fortune didn't only come from Victoria's Secret. It came from his other companies, too. Lane Bryant, Bath & Body Works, and Abercrombie & Fitch. Yep, another brand that targeted hot young things, much like Victoria's Secret.
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Chapter 8: What is the legacy of Les Wexner and Victoria's Secret today?
You could say the same about Les Wexner. He was a great leader, inspired by other people's ideas and always building on them. But Les's wealth, it also made him a target. Gabe, it's so nice to see you.
It's good to see you.
So why did you get interested in Les Wexner? Gabriel Sherman is a Vanity Fair writer famous for covering Fox News' Roger Ailes. More recently, he's been looking into Wexner. He says that Wexner's assets were insane.
I mean, Wexner in the 1980s and 1990s was, you know, almost as rich as like Mark Zuckerberg is today.
So in 1986, only four years after Les bought Victoria's Secret, he met Jeffrey Epstein. And Epstein had his eye on all that Les had.
The largest private yacht owned by an American. It was like one of the first super yachts before like the Saudi princes started in the Russian oligarchs started building them. I would liken him to Ray Kroc, who founded McDonald's, like the modern McDonald's, in that Wexner was really the first person to globalize retail and to see retail as entertainment, the way fast food became entertainment.
Now, looking at him as a human being, he's a very complicated person. Wexner lived in fear of you know, kind of being his own man and making his own life choices separate from business.
Maybe I was driven to escape from my childhood and to be something.
I don't really believe in stopping to smell the roses. By nature, I'm an optimist. I'm afraid I'm going to get hit by a truck.
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